May 18, 1968: Cleveland’s Stan Williams tosses a gem in the Year of the Pitcher

The 1968 season is remembered as “the Year of the Pitcher,” and for good reason. For the first time since the Deadball Era, both the American and National Leagues posted ERAs under 3.1 Only one AL hitter, Carl Yastrzemski, finished with an average of .300 or greater, and major-league batters as a whole averaged just .237.2 Denny McLain won 31 games, Bob Gibson posted a 1.12 ERA, and five pitchers threw no-hitters, including a perfect game by Catfish Hunter.3

The best start of the season wasn’t made by any of those pitchers—at least, not if you use Game Score to measure quality. The Game Score formula, developed by pioneering baseball researcher and SABR member Bill James, awards starting pitchers points for positive achievements such as strikeouts and outs recorded, while docking points for negative events like hits, walks, and earned runs surrendered.4 Like all formulas, it has its flaws;5 James himself once deprecated Game Score as a “garbage stat,” worth more as a conversation starter than a serious analytical tool.6 Still, it’s an objective, performance-based attempt to compare the quality of pitchers’ starts.

The highest Game Score of the “Year of the Pitcher” wasn’t earned by Hunter, Gibson, Luis Tiant, or Sam McDowell, though they all placed in the Top 10. Instead, the less heralded Stan Williams of the Cleveland Indians claimed the honor on May 18, when he pitched 10 innings of two-hit, no-walk, 12-strikeout baseball against the Baltimore Orioles to post a Game Score of 100 points.7 To top it off, Williams drove in the game’s only run in the bottom of the 10th—an impressive feat, even if it’s not factored into his Game Score. “Stan Williams did everything for the Indians yesterday except launder the uniforms,” one scribe wrote.8

Williams at the time was a 31-year-old righty who had won a World Series ring with the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers and lost two other Series as a member of the New York Yankees.9 An arm injury knocked him back to Triple A in 1965 and 1966, and even drove him to quit the sport for about two months.10 But he recovered and claimed a spot on Cleveland’s staff, starting roughly half of his games in 1967 and 1968. Entering his May 18 start, he was 1-1 with a 1.11 ERA. He’d beaten Baltimore with a six-hit complete game in his previous start, in the second game of a May 12 doubleheader.

His opponent was 26-year-old righty Tom Phoebus. Phoebus had not been part of the Orioles’ 1966 World Series championship, appearing in just three regular-season games that year, but he later picked up a World Series win in relief for the 1970 champion Orioles. Phoebus entered the game with a 4-3 record and a 1.78 ERA, including a no-hitter on April 27 against the Boston Red Sox. He’d pitched against Cleveland in the first game of the May 12 doubleheader, giving up five hits and a run in eight innings and taking the loss against Tiant.

The Indians had swept the Orioles in a four-game series in Baltimore from May 10 through 12. Now the teams were meeting for a four-game set in Cleveland. The Orioles won the series opener the previous night, 6-2, behind the pitching of Gene Brabender. In the early going, the Orioles’ 18-13 record placed them in second, two games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers. Cleveland was three games back, in third place, with a record of 17-14 and one tie.

The Orioles’ lineup included many of the players who fueled the team’s run to three straight World Series from 1969 through 1971—including Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Boog Powell, Paul Blair, Davey Johnson, Mark Belanger, and Elrod Hendricks. Another key part of those World Series teams, Earl Weaver, was coaching at first base for Baltimore; he replaced Hank Bauer as manager in early July.

The first three innings on that Saturday afternoon passed with only one baserunner for either side. Cleveland’s Chico Salmon drew a leadoff walk in the third and stole second base, but Phoebus set down the next three hitters. A two-out double down the right-field line11 by the Indians’ Duke Sims in the fourth inning moved another runner into scoring position, without result. Brooks Robinson, marking his 31st birthday, collected the Orioles’ first hit with two out in the fifth, singling into left field, but Hendricks’ line out to right ended the inning.

Cleveland got a rare opportunity with two outs in the sixth. Baltimore’s Belanger was one of the best-fielding shortstops of his generation, a future eight-time Gold Glove winner, and he’d made a dramatic leaping stab of a line drive in the fourth inning.12 But he failed to handle Vic Davalillo’s grounder, allowing the Indians’ right fielder to reach first.13 Davalillo then stole second before Max Alvis popped foul to the catcher.

A similar two-out rally in the seventh handed the Orioles their first runner in scoring position. Frank Robinson reached first on third baseman Alvis’s throwing error, sliding into the bag,14 and Powell singled him to second with a shot off Salmon’s glove.15 This time, Brooks Robinson ended the rally with a fly to Davalillo.

The game remained 0-0 entering the ninth inning. Williams dispatched Blair, Johnson, and Curt Blefary in order—the latter on a called third strike, Baltimore’s 11th whiff of the game. The Orioles had gone down in one-two-three fashion in seven of their nine turns at bat.

The Indians almost walked the game off in the bottom half. Davalillo led off with an infield single to second base—just Cleveland’s third hit—and took second when Davey Johnson’s ill-advised throw soared into the dugout.16 Alvis bunted him to third. Phoebus issued two intentional walks, to Sims and Tony Horton, loading the bases with one out.

Left fielder Tommy Harper, who entered the game hitting just .192 in his only season with the Indians, was up next, but manager Alvin Dark sent veteran Leon Wagner to pinch-hit. Wagner, batting .216, had collected a pinch-hit double and RBI in the previous day’s game. Wagner made Phoebus and the Orioles look like geniuses. After taking two strikes and fouling off two more pitches, he grounded to Powell at first, who fired to Hendricks for the force at home; the catcher threw to Johnson covering first for the inning-ending double play. Wagner said later that he got a slow start to first because he thought the ball was foul.17

Williams mowed down the Orioles on six pitches in the top of the 10th,18 once again in order, and Phoebus came back out for the bottom half. After a remarkable Brooks Robinson play turned Salmon’s grounder into an out,19 Dark sent Willie Smith to hit for shortstop Larry Brown, and Smith crashed a ground-rule, opposite-field double that bounced into the left-field stands.20 Rookie Dave Nelson ran for him.

Williams was up next. He’d collected an eighth-inning single and brought a .250 average into the game, though it was based on only four at-bats. Dark let him hit for himself, and Williams repaid the confidence by lacing a game-winning single over shortstop and into left-center field on Phoebus’s first pitch.21 The hit, just Cleveland’s fifth, ended the game in 2 hours and 28 minutes.

After the game, Williams—who threw 122 pitches—said he’d relied mostly on fastballs, curves, and sliders, thrown from a variety of arm angles, and denied persistent rumors that he threw a spitball.22 “I had great control today,” he added. “I knew where everything was going.”23 Dark called the game “the best-pitched game we’ve had all year.”24 Williams’s opponents were impressed too. Powell praised his consistent command of the slider, while Frank Robinson said, “He spots the ball in and out. He knows what he’s doing. Throws breaking balls when he’s behind and keeps the batter off balance.”25

Only 5,394 paying fans saw Williams’s masterpiece, though more than 15,000 children who were admitted free through promotions swelled attendance to 20,219.26 They would have been challenged to see a better-pitched game—even in the famous “Year of the Pitcher.”

Acknowledgments and Author’s Note 

This story was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author appreciates the research assistance of SABR members Gary Belleville and Vince Guerrieri.

Sources

A Stathead search run by Gary Belleville, listing the top Game Scores of 1968, was integral to this article: https://stathead.com/tiny/V1dGN.

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE196805180.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1968/B05180CLE1968.htm

Notes

1 Gabriel Schechter, “Was 2010 Really the ‘Year of the Pitcher’?,” March 24, 2011, Never Too Much Baseball, excerpted at SABR.org, accessed August 2023. https://sabr.org/latest/was-2010-really-the-year-of-the-pitcher/.

2 Yastrzemski hit .301. Some context for the .237 batting average: The batting average across all big-league teams was .258 both 10 seasons earlier, in 1958, and 10 seasons later, in 1978. “1968 Major League Team Statistics,” Baseball-Reference, accessed August 2023, https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/1968.shtml.

3 The other four were Tom Phoebus, George Culver, Gaylord Perry, and Ray Washburn. Perry and Washburn pitched their no-hitters on consecutive days (September 17 and 18).

4 The full formula for Game Score, as explained on Baseball-Reference: The starting pitcher begins with 50 points. He gains one point for each out recorded, one point for each strikeout, and two points for each inning completed after the fourth. He loses one point for each walk, two points for each hit, two points for each unearned run, and four points for each earned run.

5 For instance, since pitchers receive points for strikeouts, a pitcher who strikes out 12 in a two-hit shutout will get a higher Game Score than a pitcher who induces 27 groundball outs in a two-hit shutout—even though the groundball pitcher was just as effective as the strikeout artist. The formula also does not account for degree of difficulty: A pitcher making identical starts against the 1968 Cincinnati Reds (team batting average: .273) and the 1968 New York Mets (team average: .228) would receive the same Game Score for both performances, even though the Reds were, on average, a tangibly more challenging team to pitch to.

6 James used this description while introducing Game Score in his 1988 Baseball Abstract, his last in a series of 12 annual baseball-analytics books beloved among baseball fans and stat nerds in the 1970s and ’80s. (The author of this story was one such reader.) Rich Lederer, “Abstracts from the Abstracts,” BaseballAnalysts.com, posted January 4, 2005; accessed August 2023, http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2005/01/abstracts_from_23.php.

7 Williams’s game was the only triple-digit Game Score of 1968. (Starting pitchers begin the game with 50 points and lose or gain points from there; see Note 4 for an explanation of how Game Score is calculated.) Tiant’s 10-inning, six-hit, 19-strikeout shutout of July 3 was right behind at 99 points. Hunter’s perfect game was one of three that tied for third place with 98 points; the others in third were McDowell and Washington’s Frank Bertaina.

8 Russell Schneider, “Stan Whole Show as Indians Win, 1-0,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 19, 1968: 1C.

9 He also pitched for the Minnesota Twins in the 1970 AL Championship Series, which the Twins lost to the Baltimore Orioles.

10 Lou Hatter, “Stan Williams, Ex-Sore Arm Pitcher, Gives Orioles Pain,” Baltimore Sun, May 19, 1968: A2.

11 Jim Elliot, “Indians Beat Orioles, 1-0,” Baltimore Sun, May 19, 1968: A1.

12 Elliot.

13 The Baltimore Sun reported that the grounder “could have been scored a hit.”

14 A United Press International photo showed Robinson sliding as Indians first baseman Tony Horton leapt for the throw. Newspapers using the photo included the Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder, May 19, 1968: 2D.

15 Hatter, “Stan Williams, Ex-Sore Arm Pitcher, Gives Orioles Pain.”

16 Elliot, “Indians Beat Orioles, 1-0.”

17 Elliot; Schneider, “Stan Whole Show as Indians Win, 1-0.”

18 Schneider.

19 Elliot.

20 Elliot.

21 Hatter, “Stan Williams, Ex-Sore Arm Pitcher, Gives Orioles Pain.” Incidentally, Phoebus’s Game Score for his excellent outing was 75.

22 Hatter; Schneider, “Stan Whole Show as Indians Win, 1-0.”

23 Chuck Heaton, “Big Day for Stan,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 19, 1968: 1C.

24 Hank Kosloski, “Indians Blank Birds, 1-0,” Mansfield (Ohio) News Journal, May 19, 1968: 1C.

25 Heaton, “Big Day for Stan.”

26 Elliot, “Indians Beat Orioles, 1-0.”